Month: June 2017

Ten simple steps to take before disaster

  1. Be frugal: Check your home and surrounding for supplies that already reside in the area. Existing water tanks. That water filter from the trip down under and so on.
  2. Be friendly: People become savages the moment they are hungry and a moment before their children become hungry. Make friends that matter so you can become a group that works and thrives together. Don’t be afraid to be selective. A drop of poison can poison an entire well.
  3. Be quiet: Avoid hanging a PREPPER sticker on your car or bike and don’t mention your horded stocks of medicine, ammo and high quality puzzles to everyone. Learn to think before you speak.
  4. Be fit: A six pack will do you little good in a disaster but the ability to carry food and water home, to fight and to climb will do a lot. Make your legs back and arms strong for work and not a workout. Think of a farmer’s need for strength rather than a weight lifter.
  5. Be attentive: Pay attention to people’s behavior and what happens in your surroundings. Awareness grows with use and gives you a heads up to danger, opportunity and the onset of big changes before the train leaves the station.
  6. Be light: Learn to use each item you have in several ways. Your analog watch is also a compass during the day and each bag is also a water carrier and a twig insulation when it is cold. Thinking of new uses for items is a way of being. Make it your own before you have to.
  7. Be independent: Pay attention when you have a professional fix your car or plumbing and do as much as you can by yourself or by being helpful and on the spot when needed. Learn the basics of as much as you can so you are less dependent and more able to offer valuable help when needed.
  8. Be invisible: Watch and experiment with dress, walking pattern and speech. Pay attention to what takes attention and what flies under the radar throughout the year and events. Be able to take different routes to the same location and move as the gray man.
  9. Be informed: Read and listen to several news sources that are both electronic and human. Pay attention to what comes before the storm and ride it.
  10. Be humble: Pay attention to the free lessons nature teaches year round and to every person you meet. Everyone has something to give you in their own special and sometimes nasty way.

Do a little bit each day. It adds up to a lot.

 

Notes from Class: Letting yourself in

Boom Boom Boom is what we expect from a fight scene in a movie or even a knife fight. There is a reason historical swords and harness (plate and shield) are lighter than what we use today. In a fight it is about letting yourself in without letting yourself get hammered.

Begin with giving permission to be touched. We must be aware of the fear and flinch in order to ride this wave and use it to our advantage.

  1. Place a finger on your partners head and push. Have them collapse their structure from their knees and pay attention to how they do it. Make sure to have them collapse in different direction and from both legs and not just one preferred modus operandi. Make sure they allow their bodies to move instead of falling like a log.
  2. Place the blade of the hand on the neck of your partner and push down and up and side to side. Have them collapse while keeping their horizon (eye focus and internal horizon) free to move while in contact. Maintain as before the focus to help your partner be free from being a follower. Make choices on the go.
  3. Hold onto your partner using two points of contact. Have them tense the entire body against the hold to feel the coil of tension and on the second breath release the coil and move the body in semi collapse toward the partner. Move within the movement of the hold and bring the partner down using just movement. Consider you have 76 more people attacking you so do not waste your energy.

Continue with giving yourself permission to keep moving.

  1. Breathe and move your hips in a pattern. Have your partner engage you and focus on letting each movement come from this preexisting movement. You are always in continuous if you are aware that you are alive, breathing and moving.
  2. Repeat the work, only now move your shoulders in a pattern.
  3. Repeat the work, only now move your head in a pattern.

Enjoy the melee. Join in combat with a clean mind and an open heart. You will not always win but you may learn.

Give your children the edge

Give your children the edge of attention. We all have it to some degree. Give the young ones the way to hone their awareness to their own gifts and enjoy the process too 🙂

  1. The tickle game – Tell your kids that from now on. You will be coming to tickle them by surprise. They will grow more alert and attentive to human behaviour and learn to read ques and faints better. The second level of this is that they will initiate the tickle game so always pay attention. (Make sure you avoid doing it while driving or choosing MOS)
  2. The spotting game – This is a good car game. Tell your kids to locate the next green sign, the next flying bird or the next dog. This will hone the hunting brain and the kids will be able to find patterns easier. The second level of this is to find a combination. For example – a a dog with a little girl or a tall man with a square briefcase.
  3. The flashlight game – Get a few narrow beam flashlights. Play hide and seek in the darkness of night and teach your kids to grasp the frame iluminated faster and on the move and that when they are looking, they are also looked at. Play so you are able to turn the flashlight for one second at a time and only while in movement.

Do what is needed in the best way possible.

Notes from Class: Rolling thunder

Solo and partner work complement each other. Here is a coupling of those drills that come to bring the rolling thunder of freedom of movement.

SOLOish

  1. Have two partners hold onto your wrists (or keep your arms in the air…) and roll you forward and backwards from standing to the ground and back.
  2. Repeat the work but keep your knees straight so you learn to better use your hips and ankles and most of all, choose your horizon – look and see at the same time. Do not aimlessly go with the current.
  3. Have two partners or one capable one 🙂 hold onto one wrist and one ankle as you lay on the ground. Breath and turn facing up and down in both directions using just the body motion. Feel and find the freedom under hold in your body. Ride the tension and stay free.
  4. Start at a standing position and relax one shoulder forward and the other backwards as you do the same with your hips and knees. Gently lower yourself to sitting on the sides of your legs and continue the movement to a squat and back to standing. Maintain the turn throughout the movement.
  5. Repeat the work but use your arms from your shoulders to further integrate how the upper and lower body contribute to the path you are moving on.

Partner

  1. Have a partner strike your face. Welcome the contact and relax your lower body on contact. Work from all directions.
  2. Have a partner strike your face. Welcome the contact with relaxation and as you move the body, glide with an arm on the incoming contact and continue to glide to place your limb on their head.
  3. Have a partner strike your face and move toward and into your space continuously. Glide on the contact and enter without getting face contact yourself.
  4. Have a partner stand at your left and right. Have them decide amongst themselves who goes in first and as one engages you, the second comes in too. Move without entangling with either so you maintain freedom of location and angle. Repeat and enjoy the movement.

Enjoy and send me your requests and comments.

Sharon.

 

Notes from class: Don’t be there

It may be nice to be Superman but for mortals it may be wise to sometime move out of the way. Let us explore how to best do that.

  1. Have a few friends attempt to walk through you at walking speed. Avoid being bumped into by moving out of the way.
  2. Repeat the drill and add that you cannot look at the same direction for more than it takes to take a step.
  3. Repeat the drill and add that you also try to push the partners from the back (bring to your mind the idea of angles of engagement). Extra points if you bump them into each other or a tree. If you are doing this outside, be carefull to avoid small children and friendly dogs.
  4. Repeat the drill and add that one of the partners engages in running pace. Avoid placing your tounge between your teeth. I have been there.
  5. Have your partners come to engage you in a hold in a building manner. This means the moment one makes contact , the second moves to innitiate and so on. Focus on staying free or end up at the bottom of the pile.
  6. Repeat the drill with one of the partners engaging in a running pace.
  7. Repeat the drill with the intention to set up the contact yourself. Choose who to engage and move toward them yourself and maintain a moving contact. Keep moving as you engage. Otherwise you may experience the sensation of the ground pressing on your from below.
  8. Repeat the drill but have the partners work as a group. Have them try to crowd you into a location or direction so you maintian not only freedom of contact but your own heading. One contact by your own choosing may be better than five when you are also not on friendly ground.
  9. Repeat the drill but have two people work the avoidance together. Have them help each other stay free and on course. Plan a betrail of one of the partners from time to time to have a good laugh and to bring light on the reality of fear and trust in the non fiction world….

Keep moving.

 

Notes from class: Eye communication

The direction and focus of the eyes holds your own movement, balance and thoughts but it also a transmission between yourself and your contact.

Here are a few games to play to bring this into your daily awareness.

 

  1. Stand in front of your partner and focus on them. Change focus from them to the background as fast as you can until you merge the two into one whole.
  2. Walk a circle around your partner and release your focus to see them when they are in your scope. Have them circle you and release the focus so you let them leave your scope instead of letting the moving object control you externally.
  3. Stand in front of your partner and focus your eyes on the area you aim to touch and then try to touch it. Repeat where you focus on one direction and moving in another. Enjoy the game and keep breathing.
  4. Stand in front of your partner and focus on one part of their body. Check if you can “call out” a movement or direction by simply focusing on it.
  5. Place your hand on your partner and have them look at you. Notice if you can see the shift to move and give them a push to let them know when you feel it. Shift positions every few times to keep from going into a tempo.